Better on DVD

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It probably has something to do with the fact that the writers live in the environment they have created for the characters 24/7, and the "Previously On..." is not enough to bring the viewer back into that world. Perhaps it has to do with Executive Meddling. It could be that the act breaks are a little soft. Or maybe just the lack of constant commercial breaks makes the immersion much more complete. Additionally, the presence of subtitles can make it easier to tell what people are saying if they talk too fast or have accents that are hard to understand.

The fact remains that some series do not really work quite as well until you sit down for a marathon with the DVDs.

Conversely, many non-arc self-contained episode shows, such as Law and Order and CSI are shown to have relatively low DVD sales in comparison to their continually high ratings.

The comic-book equivalent is Writing for the Trade. Can be intentional due to a Baker's Dozen or DVD Bonus Content.

You may wish to add a mental "Even" to the front of this trope title if it applies to a show you already loved on TV.

Watch out for Hype Backlash. Also expect a dose of what seems to you like Viewers Are Goldfish as characters reference what you just saw an hour or so ago, but was intended as a catchup for the folks tuning in weekly.

Compare Vindicated by Cable where a Film didn't sell at the Box Office (whether it was overpriced or it was merely up against a Summer Blockbuster) but attains a following through repeats on television. (Or when its DVD is found in the $5 bin at the local Walgetco.)

Unrelated to Enhanced on DVD, which involves fixing animation errors and improving special effects between the original broadcast and the home video release.

Examples of Better on DVD include:

Anime

• While still a hit at airing time, AIR certainly counts.
• FLCL, although only six episodes long, loses its magic if too much of a gap is left between each episode. This is mainly due to the fact you won't know what's going on, considering the random nature of the show. Well, you won't know what's going on either way, but if you don't watch them quickly its easy to forget that it doesn't matter.
  • What else do you expect from Gainax?
• Any series that makes use of Inaction Sequence also applies under the initial definition.
• Realizing that many series fall under this, FUNimation has started releasing anime DVDs with a special feature that plays all of them in sequence and skips the intro and credits.
  • There was a collection of old Robotech videotapes that did that too, presenting six episodes per tape as one extended story, but also cut out a few scenes of each episode.
  • Geneon, when it was still Pioneer, also did this with their VHS tapes - their Tenchi Muyo! TV releases had only a single OP and ED ever played per tape.
  • The VHS tapes of The Slayers from Central Park Media did the same as well.
• The fanbase of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's is incredibly split when it comes to characters, so the anime as of recently has tried to give even time to every character. Since the show airs one episode a week (and is subbed the day after it airs), it angers fans when there favorite character doesn't get the spotlight, but watching the show on DVD isn't nearly as infuriating due to the wait, and the backstory episodes add some pleasant flavor to the surprisingly complicated universe.
• It can be pretty damned difficult to follow Neon Genesis Evangelion if you're only watching an episode every week. It's easier to follow if you're watching a marathon of the entire thing in order, along with reading up of some explanatory material.
• Most definitely the case for Naruto in the UK; Jetix is on par with 4kids with needless editing, and is also fond of switching the episode order around (Last part of the Naruto vs. Neji fight, followed by the beginning of the Zabuza arc, to name one example).
  • Also of note is that the foreign dubs in general are based on the DVD version which cleans up the animation substantially, leading some to believe that the animation was changed for the dub.
  • In the uncut DVDs, the censorship on Lee's bottle of sake is removed, and the references to alcohol are restored.
• Sailor Moon S DVDs are uncut and feature both the Japanese and English versions, which is great. However, the "Uranus and Neptune are cousins" aspect of the English version is left in, which, accompanied with the scenes which the dub cut, makes them look much more like incestuous cousins.
  • The Subtitled only release of the first two seasons is also far better then the one with the dub, simply for the fact that you get all the episodes uncut. Oh and the fact it's not the horrible horrible dub helps too.
• Code Geass, due to having most of its plot squished into the last ten or so episodes, makes a lot more sense if you watch all of R2 at once. The animation was also cleaned-up and improved overall.
• The Tatami Galaxy has had very different reception from people who viewed it when airing and those who marathoned the whole thing in one go.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is very arc-heavy. The first series is divided between "Standalone" (one-shot) and "Complex" (arc) episodes. This allows viewers to see the whole "Laughing Man" arc from start to finish without interruption.
  • The two compilation movies of the series (The Laughing Man and Individual Eleven) serve this same purpose.
• While not specifically better, Haruhi Suzumiya is shown in chronological order on DVD, which can help the series make more sense. The series was originally meant to be shown in a particular non-chronological sequence, and even on DVD, one of the chronologically last episodes is used as a Non-Indicative First Episode. The series arguably has much better pacing when viewed in its original order, and this is especially apparent at the end, where the intended last episode (chronologically happening in the middle) is dramatic and world-changing, while the chronological last episode (originally shown in the middle) basically consists of everyone sitting around the club room on a typical day, which is quite disappointing as a season finale.
  • • However, add in The Movie and "Someday in the Rain" becomes much more significant, as it shows Kyon's little slice of normality (and a subtle hint of a certain girl's affection for him), a status quo that is abruptly punctured by the events of Disappearance. With that final piece in place, it is a perfectly constructed series when watched in any order.
  • The second season's infamous "Endless Eight" arc is much less frustrating when you aren't forced to watch it one episode a week for two months, not to mention that on DVD you can skip some episodes since nothing is really missed if you only watch the first, second, and last parts.
• Baccano!! makes infinitely more sense watched all at once. This goes for most other Anachronic Order shows as well.
• If you're watching Rideback every week as it airs (or as FUNimation adds the episodes to their video player) you will probably forget everything that happened the previous week by the time the next episode(s) come out.
• Since the episodes are only 5 minutes long, Axis Powers Hetalia is usually better watched one after another on DVD.
• Excel Saga. The crazy Parody/Deconstruction of anime in general is much easier (and more fun) to watch/understand in one go than if you were to try and watch it on TV one week at a time.
  • Plus it's the only way to see the banned episode.
• Literally anything by Studio Shaft, what with the Unreadably Fast Text prolific in their shows (Maria Holic, Bakemonogatari and Hidamari Sketch are all egregious offenders). Puella Magi Madoka Magica counts as well, but for other reasons.
• Gundam Wing, due to having a heavy plot with tons of Shocking Swerves, and Loads and Loads of Characters who are Heel Face Revolving Doors. If you missed even a single episode, you were likely to be absolutely lost.

Film

• In general, the introduction of DVD kicked off the release of movies to home video in widescreen. While there were a few widescreen VHS tapes released beforehand, it wasn't until the DVD format came out that widescreen home video became really popular.
• Clue is a rare film with Multiple Endings. The DVD allows watching one of the three endings at random, or watching all three in successions, allowing the audience to better compare them, and notice the parallels (such as the repeated lines) between each of them. Certainly more practical than hunting for three movie theaters showing three different versions of the movie!
• Transformers: Some people have found it to be easier to follow the action on a smaller screen because there was so much detail on the robots that would distract you from the important stuff.
• A Knight's Tale. The commentary track with Brian Helgeland and Paul Bettany was hilarious. (No one told them Queen wasn't historically accurate!).
• Paranormal Activity: Due to the concept of the film, it is arguably much scarier watching it home alone (preferably at night) than when watching it in a theater.
• The Fourth Kind is probably scarier when watched home alone.
• Kingdom of Heaven if it's the director's cut, which adds something like 45 minutes of character development and political background/intrigue. The additions from the director's cut give some meaning and context to the battles and actions of the major characters. The theatrical cut is a rather shallow swords-and-sandals movie, but the full cut weaves a story of political intrigue and love that's actually worth watching.
• An interesting case of 'Better On VHS' occurs with An American Tail. Some of the voices on the DVD version were redubbed for whatever reason.
• Roger Ebert once commented that Moulin Rouge works much better on the small screen than the big screen, citing that the rapid cuts and visual overload dragged the film down in theaters.
• The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The extended editions add about 45 minutes to each movie. It's mostly embellishment on the setting and characters, which would've slowed down the pacing in theaters, but ends up perfect for hardcore LOTR fans.
• For a certain segment of the fans, you can guarantee any nude scene is this. If you want nudity, in theater or recorded is better. If you want to show it slowly, zooming in on your favorite body parts, DVD is even better.
• The extended cut of Big goes even further into elaborating why Josh really wanted to be "big".
• The Alien franchise is much better when viewed on DVD, especially because (via the Alien Quadrilogy and Alien Anthology sets) it allowed the production company to include multiple cuts of each film film on their own dedicated disc. Aliens featured the heretofore-unreleased theatrical cut and special edition (which added a half-hour worth of footage), while Alien 3 featured an assembly cut kitbashed from the original negatives that runs an hour longer than the theatrical version. The Anthology set also allowed viewers to access a massive database of additional information, interviews and deleted scenes from any of the discs in the set (via Blu-Ray technology).
• If you watched all the Harry Potter films in theaters, but never rewatched the previous entries on DVD (or read the books, for that matter), you probably ended up being very confused. It's much easier to follow the storyline when there isn't a year or two between each installment, and by the end of the series you aren't struggling to remember stuff from a movie you last saw ten years ago.

Live Action TV

• The Wire does not hold your hand at all when is comes to referencing previous plot points and characters, so seeing them in rapid succession can really help you catch everything. The DVD menus also configured so you don't have to watch the "Previously On..." segments unless you want to.
• Prison Break, due to its fondness for Xanatos Speed Chess plots.
• The general consensus on Angel is that Season 4 qualifies, mostly due to the love triangle between the title character, Cordelia, and Angel's son who Likes Older Women. Much of this season isn't even essential to the plot, as Season 5 magically Reset Buttons all of the past year's events.
• Firefly: Especially since the episodes were originally aired Out of Order and had month-long spaces in between some and weren't advertised and in some cases weren't aired at all.
• The Sarah Connor Chronicles: the audio commentaries often feature the actors and crew joking about how long the "Previously on..." segment at the start of the episodes is getting, especially in season two.
• Lost. Trust us, the twists and turns the plot takes are much easier when you know you can watch the next episode immediately.
• Twenty Four, because its real-time format allows for full-day marathons (though the shows are actually 48 minutes, giving you, at least, some time to use the bathroom -- unlike the characters.)
• Farscape The four-season plot line (well, seasons 2-4, the miniseries, the last four episodes of season 1) play much better in marathon format.
• Arrested Development. The show is packed with Call Backs and Foreshadowing, mostly in one-liners that make little sense on their own, but are hilarious when viewed as a part of the show as a whole. Pretty much Lost if it were a comedy.
• Oz
• Battlestar Galactica. All those cliffhangers will be much easier when you can watch the entire show on DVD. Not to mention dispensing with week-long breaks between setup episodes and payoff episodes, and that seven episodes exist in their full form only on DVD, having been truncated for airing.
• Babylon 5: Things will move very fast, though; it was written to be watched over years, with each season generally taking place over a year. The telepath arc in Season 5 is also much more bearable.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: While executives sometimes recognize this fact when rerunning it and start by showing it in order, they inevitably lose patience before the run is complete, or perhaps simply assume that they'll fail to attract new viewers over time this way.
• Veronica Mars, especially season three, if only because the Aerie Girls and obnoxious CW teases where nowhere to be found.
• With Heroes, it goes both ways. While watching it on DVD allows the slower bits to move much faster (as you do not have to wait weeks for a plot point to be resolved) and generally does improve later volumes, it also makes a lot of plot holes and aborted arcs more apparent, especially during the second and third volumes.
• Band of Brothers, and, by extension The Pacific. Indeed both were specifically filmed with the DVD release in mind.
• Oddly enough, The West Wing. There's a lot of subtle references to previous episodes in the first few years that are easy to miss when watching the show on air. Moreover, the enormous amounts of acronyms, abbreviations and slang they use when referring to the political situation in Washington at any given moment, combined with the sheer speed at which the characters talk a lot of the time, make the ability to turn on subtitles often vital to understanding what the hell is going on. The ability to cram a few Google study sessions on the more esoteric areas of the American government systems in the middle of an episode with the pause button is useful too.
• Unfortunately, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is Worse on DVD. Since the show deals with many ongoing plot lines at once (specially during the last 5 episodes), there is much exposition and recapping during every episode. This was done to refresh the viewers' mind (and attract new ones) when the series aired weekly, but is really annoying when watching several episodes back to back.
• Doctor Who: While most stories were fully self-contained, the classic series occasionally had a lot of Call Backs and Continuity Nods. Old story elements, enemies and allies could be brought back again several years later and since reruns were rare (or, in the case of several black-and-white episodes, impossible) you couldn't possibly keep track of everything unless you'd been watching since the beginning and had an exceptional memory (don't forget the series ran continuously for 26 years). Watching them on DVD allows you to keep better track of the continuity and be able to appreciate the details and references to previous stories more. In particular, it makes the many continuity-heavy stories of The Eighties, widely criticized at the time for their Continuity Lock Out status, much more enjoyable. On the other hand the serial format and (typically) slow pace of the stories translates poorly for continuous viewings common with DVD marathons, creating a lot of pacing issues with repetitive "companion in peril" cliffhangers at the end of each episode.
• Dollhouse, partly because shows by Tim Minear and Joss Whedon already tend to do this anyway, partly because it's a dense, fast-paced Myth Arc-heavy show with steady plot and character arc progression from one episode to the next, and partly because watching the episodes more than once means you catch more of the little things.
• Carnivale. The story (especially in season one) is much more coherent and the whole thing looks amazing.
• Frasier, weirdly enough for a sitcom. It's very self-referential, but in a subtle way that is much more easily picked up on if you watch several episodes in a row. This mostly applies to the later seasons that succumbed to Seasonal Rot, and, oddly enough, Cerebus Syndrome.
• Dead Zone.
• The second series of Chuck, if you're not American, is better on DVD for the simple reason that the episode Chuck Vs. The Third Dimension wasn't aired in 3D in countries that didn't have the Superbowl event. The DVD release contains the 3D version and a pair of glasses to view it with, so you can finally see Yvonne Strahovski's negligee popping out of the screen as the gods intended.
  • Quite the opposite in Britain - the 3D version was aired on TV, and the DVD release didn't contain the glasses.
  • For those annoyed by the constant will-they-won't-they, not having to wait a week between Chuck and Sarah mishearing/mis-seeing/suddenly having an old flame pop in allows the episodes to be viewed as one whole story as opposed to 'how will Chuck and Sarah break up this week?'
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer, especially seasons 3, 4, and 5, when there were meaningful arcs. Season 5 lets you see that every single episode, no matter how much it seemed like filler at first, leads toward something important in the big Season Finale.
  • Although the 'previously on' segments do become annoying due to the same clips being repeated several times e.g. Buffy finding out from the monk about where Dawn came from.
  • Fortunately, the season sets available in retail stores in America have 'previously' for only one episode, "When She Was Bad".
• Alias.
• Saturday Night Live's full season DVDs (from seasons one to five) are an inversion, as all the episodes are the full, uncut 90-minute version. Any SNL fan who sees this show through the Nostalgia Filter will be shaken to realize that even during a good era of SNL, there were a lot of sketches that haven't aged very well or weren't good in the first place.
  • The "Best of" clip show episodes, however, are played straight, as a lot of them are shown extended with sketches that the televised version didn't air due to time constraints (along with the special features and outtakes section).
• Life On Mars, as each season is only eight episodes long, is feasibly possible to watch in its entirety in a day or two. The last two episodes are much easier to understand when one still remembers what happened in the first season. Also, the emotional impact of the final episode is intense when you've just spent two days non-stop with this character.
• Bliss At least compared to the American TV edit on Oxygen, if you wanted to see the nudity and other adult content anyways.
• Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Some of Rita Repulsa's schemes (Super Putty, for instance) go from one episode to another, without a "Part I".
• A lot of shows cancelled after just a season or so feel this way, such as Jericho and FlashForward, feel a lot better on DVD leading some to be frustrated at the end of the series. Watching one episode after another commercial-free makes the story feel much tighter.
• Watching Fringe on DVD can feel awfully repetitive during the procedural heavy first half of the show's first season, but once the long term plot developments really kick into gear, it's much more preferable to watch this show non-stop (especially after season two).
• How I Met Your Mother, which has an incredibly complex and intricate continuity with myriad callbacks and underlying story arcs that don't stop to explain what's going on to the audience, except for the few times where Future!Ted says "Kids, remember when I told you..." when a specific event (like the Slap Bet) can be concisely explained. It is rather confusing to watch out of order, and way more confusing to watch later seasons without seeing the earlier seasons first (eg, you won't understand why Robin and Ted made that joke unless you have extensive knowledge of their relationship and breakup, you won't get why that line of Barney's elicited that reaction unless you know how Ted got dumped at the altar, you won't follow that logic unless you know that sandwiches are a visual euphemism for pot, you won't understand a lot of flashbacks unless you have memorized the timeline of Lily and Marshall's relationship, etc.) Most of all, a lot of hints and deductions about the Mother and how Ted met her will go completely over your head if you don't know all the facts about her that have been revealed before the episode in question.
• Dexter, despite making extensive use of "Previously on..." for every single episode, fits this trope due to pacing issues later in the series. For seasons that did not receive near-universal acclaim, a primary factor in determining whether a fan enjoyed it can often be whether the individual watched it week-to-week (thus exacerbating a slow start) or all at once (practically eliminating such problems).
• Hemlock Grove is accused of exploiting this in "4 Reasons 'Hemlock Grove' Is Television's Shitty Future". J. F. Sargent claims that in the era of Netflix, TV writers use tendency to binge as an excuse to expect people to watch 13 hours of TV in a row. Skimping on the old practice of Once an Episode exposition and generally sloppier writing with more padding than substance become less noticeable during a binge, and Hemlock Grove is just bad enough that being better in a binge might just barely make it acceptable.

Video Games

• Like movies and television, video game series released on an episodic schedule (such as the Half Life Episodes series, and Telltale's Sam and Max Freelance Police, Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People and Tales of Monkey Island games) can feel more cohesive when individual episodes are played back-to-back instead of having to wait anywhere between a month and three years (and counting) for a new entry in the series.

Web Original

• There are several advantages to watching Broken Saints on DVD rather than online. 1) It's easier to pause, rewind, and fast-forward (although the inability to pause in the middle of a chapter was part of the creator's design for the series) and 2) A voice-over track!
• Red vs. Blue. On their own, each episode is generally five minutes long and you need to wait an entire week for the next five minutes of story. On DVD, they're all edited together so each season runs as a feature length Compilation Movie.
• This applies to Literature as well. An example is Jim Zoetewey's Superhero Web Serial Novel Legion of Nothing. Many readers specifically skip the story for a few weeks at a time, because they enjoy doing an Archive Binge all at once and reading through several episodes at once.

Webcomics

• Collar 6. While not exactly on DVD, the strips are so short that waiting can get a bit frustrating, but reading them in a marathon can be a lot of fun.
• Many comics that update only once a week are much better if you do Archive Binges at moderate intervals.
  • The same goes for stuff with long on-going stories, such as El Goonish Shive or Lightbringer, which can be very slow and confusing when you have to wait two to three days (if it's on time and sometimes they're not) between pages.
  • Or if they're released as a published book.
• Order of the Stick is even better in the print collections, starting around strip 150, when they moved more into ongoing stories and away from one-off gags.
  • Each book also includes multiple bonus strips, as well as creator notes at the begining of each chapter, which function similar to a DVD commentary. Certain art mistakes are also corrected, and the earliest strips had their jagged borders removed, after Rich Burlew decided they were ugly.
• Megatokyo is very much this, due to Gallagher's notoriously inconsistent updating schedule, the often confusing plot, and its Loads and Loads of Characters.
• Girl Genius has such long arcs (they were in Castle Heterodyne for four years) that it can be easy to forget fairly important plot points when it only updates three times a week. An Archive Binge makes the plot feel much more cohesive.

Western Animation

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: When watched one after the other in order, the Spacecataz shorts at the beginning of every episode of season 3 form a coherent story.
  • Not surprising; they were bits of a failed pilot for another show.
• Star Wars: Clone Wars: When the original episodes were only 4 minutes long and very little plot between them, the DVD releases just strung the episodes together, sans the in-between title sequences and end credits. The whole series flowed like two hour-long movies.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars is also notably better on DVD, since being able to choose the episode you watch plays into the show's anachronic presentation. Alternately, you can figure out and watch the chronological order of the various arcs, making some call-backs and call-forwards much clearer.
• The DVD versions of Family Guy and American Dad include a lot of scenes that neither FOX or Cartoon Network censors thought would be in good taste to air. This is especially true of Family Guy, which not only has alternate scenes that were most likely used as Censor Decoys when aired on TV, but also has two episodes considered Too Hot for TV: "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein" and "Partial Terms of Endearment". As of 2012, only "Partial Terms of Endearment" has yet to see a TV airing in America.
  • The DVD sales and Adult Swim fandom were actually enough to get Family Guy revived (much to the joy [or utter disdain]) of the show's fanbase. That alone just goes to show you how powerful this trope can be.
• Individual episodes of The Venture Brothers seem too short on their own. When watched all-together, the jokes layer on top of each other, the epic stuff gets more epic, and the "aren't we pathetic" stuff gets time to breathe.
  • Additionally, watching on DVD allows viewers to have a better chance of catching the Brick Jokes, and the creator commentary fleshes out several details that fell through the cracks of the show's "show-don't-tell" storytelling.
• Drawn Together on DVD is uncensored for the most part. Censorship is generally kept in only when it's the basis for a joke (such as Princess Clara not realising that Foxxy Love is flipping her off until she does it in return).
• Averted with the Doctor Who animated series "The Infinite Quest". Designed to be consumed by audiences in 8-minute segments over a matter of weeks, the show fuses together into a roughly 45-minute filmette which, mainly due to having the characters summarize the plot every 8 minutes, has serious pacing issues.
• Oddly enough, Robot Chicken. Taken individually the episodes seem to rely too much on Breathless Non-Sequitur, but when watched in sequence, enough patterns start to emerge that the non sequiturs become season-long Running Gags and Brick Jokes.
  • From the same production team, Titan Maximum. The series premiere is a half-hour special, but the next 9 episodes (the entire first season) are only half that (with commercials and credits); theoretically, it could be spliced together and watched as a movie.
• A few scenes from DuckTales (1987) involving such violent scenes as guns being fired and power cords being broken or ripped (wouldn't want to give kids ideas that this is okay to do without showing the realistic consequences), which were cut from the show's cable reruns, are reinstated on the show's DVD sets. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for other Disney Afternoon shows that got DVD releases.
• The Looney Tunes DVDs are rather nicely made, and unedited as well (though some cartoon shorts run with scenes that are missing, not because they were cut from TV, but because they were lost to time or never made). Given that every American channel has aired, edited, and stopped airing the Warner Brothers cartoons from the mid-1960s to the early 2000s (including Cartoon Network—though Cartoon Network has brought the shorts back when The Looney Tunes Show premiered), DVD is probably the only way anyone can see the shorts uncut and uncensored (ditto the Popeye cartoons and the MGM shorts, except for Tom and Jerry. See below)
  • Subversion: the Tom and Jerry DVDs sadly are edited to remove blackface gags and do feature Mammy Two-Shoes either cut from scenes or with a voice that doesn't sound like a stereotypical Sassy Black Woman. If you're a classic cartoon purist, then it's not Better on DVD (unless you count the fact that you can now watch it without that irritating Cartoon Network station ID bug at the bottom of the screen). But there is some good news: Warner Bros actually reversed this trend when it was discovered that the original DVD releases (advertised as being for collectors) contained the edits and redubbed Mammy voice. WB quickly set up an exchange system wherein consumers (if they so wished) could swap out the discs for ones with the uncut shorts.
• Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles takes place during seven separate campaigns consisting of five episodes each (save for a few stand-alone episodes). On DVD the episodes for each campaign are edited so that they run together like full length films.
• Archer: The later seasons episode have a lot of Running Gag and Call Back humor, so it really helps to see the earlier episodes beforehand.
  • Really, any show made by 70/30 Productions (Sealab 2021, Frisky Dingo).
• Avatar: The Last Airbender is already a great series on TV, but watching it on DVD, with the episodes back to back (instead of months separated at times) really lets the viewer catch the nuances of character development over the course of the seasons.
• Koch outdid themselves on the Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers DVD set. It actually has the series assembled in continuity order (which wasn't done when the series was on the air), which actually shows off the primitive Myth Arc the show had going. The addition of the soundtrack and booklet with notes about the characters and technology also helps.
• The Simpsons: Not only are they shown uncut with most of the scenes that were thought to be lost in syndication, but the extras have a glut of deleted scenes (some of which, if added, would have either made the episode funnier or would have filled a much-noticed plot hole in the story).
• Sym-Bionic Titan certainly fits this trope to a T. Unless you DVRed several episodes or have an exceptional memory, you're going to be hard pressed to follow the show's Continuity Porn. If the series ever makes it to DVD, it'll make a lot more sense.
• Beast Machines is a relatively short (26 episodes) series with a very tight continuity and an ever-expanding (if at times very slow) plot. Some Transformers fans claim it holds up much better when viewed in just a couple of sittings, while others say they have given up on it when it originally aired on TV purely because of this. The fact that it has many multi-episode stories has to be a factor.
• ThunderCats (2011) has a story so plot-heavy its prone to Continuity Lock Out. Some episodes don't really end as much as they just stop, only to pick up right where they left off the next week, which makes the series far easier to digest in larger chunks.